In 2012, liberalism handed Obama a second opportunity
to honor his earlier campaign slogan "change we can believe in". And once again,
following Obama's inauguration and State of the Union speeches, the liberal
left fell for the Obama charm. It forgave Obama for his many broken promises
during his first term; it forgot his habit of saying anything to please anyone in
order to win support. What is obscene in this gesture was the liberal faction's
hubris in pardoning Obama for a litany of betrayals, policies, executive
orders, and secretive negotiations against the American people for which the
president never sought forgiveness. This was supposed to be the administration
that would be unquestionably committed to accountability and transparency. However,
the Obama regime has already far exceeded its GOP predecessor in the number of
documents classified secret and the number of Freedom of Information Act
requests denied ; almost half a million were
denied between 2008-2009 alone.

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Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, wrote "Charm is the
ability to insult people without offending them" and this is the kind of
disdain Obama has displayed towards American citizens who have kept him in power.
As 40,000 people stood in the cold on the National Mall to demand that the
administration take dramatic steps to tackle climate change before the planet
reaches a point of catastrophic environmental free fall, Obama judged that golfing
with Tiger Woods should be a higher priority. The irony of these polar images represents
the arrogance and self-obsession Obama has shown towards power and domination
and his callous disregard for the voices of environmental sanity that can see
the big picture over and beyond the technocrats hovering about the White
House's inner sanctum.

Central to Obama's agenda of hope for America were
his proclamations about political party compromise. Since the GOP, the FOX
network and neocon media, the billionaires behind the Tea Party, ALEC, and the
private corporate elite controlling the political right already proved
themselves morally bankrupt and traitors of democracy and freedom, why would
compromise be thought as a means to inaugurate the kind of urgent changes
necessary to restore balance and harmony and lessen the inequality gap? So, we
must ask, what happens when ideas that are sensible and life-affirming (e.g., Obama's
first campaign promises) compromise with failure and deception (e.g., the GOP
and the agenda of the 1 percent)? This is the real Obama deception: a charm and
intellect that shields a deep and frightening moral weakness to act according
to the higher ideals of tolerance, compassion and justice that could truly
change the direction of the nation and lessen the insanity, psychopathology and
maliciousness that has become our national anthem. Moreover, the duplicity that
now characterizes the Obama White House is equally rife throughout corporate
liberalism.

In 2008, candidate Obama ran on a promise of stronger
government accountability and greater transparency. His promises also included
government making private industry accountable on condition of receiving public
funding. Wherever we find corruption in the world today, a lack of
accountability and transparency is close at hand. This is the code behind all
criminal cartels and syndicates.

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During a TED Talk , Trinidadian economist
and activist Afra Raymond defined "corruption" as "abuse of trust for the
benefit of yourself, friends and financers." In a democracy, which relies on the
expenditure of public funds, corruption manifests when the government secretly
funds programs against the will of the people. In such cases, tax dollars go
directly to corporate and corporate-sponsored entities that threaten the
quality of life rather than protect and preserve it.

Having again rallied around Obama, the faux liberal
media--Huffington Post, the entire MSNBC
lineup, The Nation, Democracy Now, Alternet, Mother Jones, Daily Kos and
others--has in Chris Hedges 's words, "betrayed the
core values they [liberals] use to define themselves--the rule of law, the
safeguarding of civil liberties, the protection of unions, the preservation of
social welfare programs, environmental accords, financial regulation, a
defiance of unjust war and torture, and the abolition of drone wars."

During the early decades of the twentieth century, these
ideals and causes would have been a standard platform of causes to define the
progressive agenda with a liberal perspective. Modern progressivism's roots began
with La Follette's Weekly, a
publication founded by Senator Robert La Follette in 1909. Today the magazine
is known as The Progressive, and
still remains a leading voice against war, militarism and the oligarchic
demands to keep the death machine functioning in Washington. How many major
corporations and financial institutions have publicly expressed opposition to
the escalation of America's wars and the new lethal military technologies, such
as air drones and bioweapons, that have earned the US such disdain and
condemnation from other nations and populations around the world? Such
companies can't be found because in a full blown oligarchy and during a war
economy they are the government's partners in crime and among the building
blocks of fascism.

The liberal media today finds itself incapable of
reporting to Americans the true state of the nation's affairs. Liberalism has
failed and will continue to botch efforts to create a reliable story because it
has not been able to move beyond the Red-Blue divide. Its downfall has been its
inability to accept and support alternative choices. For this reason, liberals continue
to blame Ralph Nader for Bush's victory and remain irrationally apologetic to
Obama and the Democratic party. According to the progressive platform, this
lunatic argument reconfirms how impoverished liberalism has become.

No longer should we rely on what the liberal left
or the conservative right tells us about the state of the nation and America's
role in the world. Both institutions are bereft of ethical and spiritual
substance. The right suffers from pre-rational superstition and
anti-intellectualism that has turned the US into a laughing stock among
developed countries. The left suffers from a highbrow intellect and a poverty
of spirit that was once, and could be again, a moral and revolutionary force to
relieve suffering and fight on behalf of peace and human and civil rights.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio
Network and the former head of communications for the
State of the World Forum and the Gorbachev Foundation. Dr.Gary
Null is the host of the nation's longest running public radio program
on natural health and the environment and a multi-award-winning director of
progressive documentary films, including War on Health: The FDA Cult of
Tyranny (2011) and Seeds of
Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOS (2012).

I am the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and producer of the Gary Null show which airs on NPR and Pacifica stations. Through the late 80s and 90s I worked as a senior research analyst in the biotech and genomic industries, (more...)